Emotions are the product of the reactive mind. Emotions dictate the quality of our life. If youre like most people you might feel like your emotions have the tendency to run wild even as you attempt to control them. Thats because of whats been planted at the unconscious level in the garden and what has been mapped out in your internal reality.

What does that mean? It means that by controlling what you plant in your garden youre half way there to controlling your emotions. Now you just need to make some new distinctions about the way youve mapped the world to ensure that the emotions that have a tendency to run wild arent used as conditioned responses.

What do I mean by that? I mean that youve setup some rules, beliefs or values as part of your map. By map I mean, the way youve interpreted reality. You are constantly interpreting reality and adding it to your pre-existing experience you do this unconsciously. Youve basically constructed a very solid map that helps you navigate the world. It is highly unlikely this map is 100% accurate. The realization that there are two realities The one you live in and the one youve interpreted in your head. Your perception of the world around you IS your reality. Youve constructed a map based on perception and THIS is the way you live the world.

How does this relate to Emotions?

As part of your reality map youve setup rules and conditions for how to deal with the world. In the early stages of life we try out all kinds of experiments for dealing with life. There are two main approaches during this time The Trial and Error method and the Modeling method. During our most impressionable years the people we know or respect become the model for our own map. In some cases we try things out on our own, and use what we learn as a result in our reality map.

HAVE YOU EVER CHANGED THE WAY YOU PERCEIVED THE WORLD?

You may have thought that reality is static and unchanging. Its out there and theres nothing you can do about it. But let me ask you, has your world ever, suddenly changed? If youre like most people youll say yes it has! At some point in your life something happened to you and it changed your entire PERSPECTIVE on life. The world wasnt what you thought it was. You had to make some serious adjustments to your map to deal with the situation that had no previous conditioned response. It might have been when someone you trusted hurt you badly. Now for GOOD OR BAD youve restructured your map to deal with the circumstance in the future. For example you might create a wall thats a mile high. Based on your previous experience and creative thought processes you decide that creating a wall is the best way to deal with future relationships that have the potential to hurt you.

Now the amazing thing about this whole process is: You can either be aware of this process and control it or it happens unconsciously. Being aware allows you to really question whether establishing a mile high wall is the best way to deal with the problem. After thinking about it you may decide that rather than establishing a wall and shutting everyone out, youll establish a series of tests. A person will have to pass each test before they move in closer to your soft spot.

Now the point here isnt which method is more effective for dealing with someone who breaches your trust the point here is being aware of how the process works and rationalizing what the best choice is! And being so aware of whats going on in your internal reality, and recognizing that you can change either the unconscious mind or the way youve mapped your reality; YOU HAVE CONTROL!

The thinking mind is an amazing gift when we know where to go with it. This process of unconscious discoveries and internal reality mapping took thousands of years to evolve into understanding. Now its been presented to you and if you never thought about it until now, youve just cut through a great deal of time.

Weve covered some extremely powerful and universal points here. Youll find that any mind strategy or technology as they are often called for dealing with life is really just guidance on how to re-map your reality. Effective communicators do a good job of understanding how most peoples minds or maps of reality work... and then help them rewrite their maps so they are more accurate, or more usable.

Many peoples maps are causing them to run into all kinds of unexpected problems. Imagine if an old time mariner had a map that said for the next 100 miles it would be open waters, but then when they actually set sail they ran into rocks. Because their map was inaccurate it caused quite an unpleasant and unexpected experience. At that point we hope they would immediately make adjustments to their map in order to ensure they didnt make the same mistake again!

So as our maps become more accurate, life becomes a smoother sailing. We get where we want to go faster and we do it with less surprises.